The pavilion will be open to the public from 10 – 16 September 2018 to coincide with London Design Festival, offering full days of programming and activities.

This year’s highlights include screenings of Performance, marking the 50th anniversary of the films release, JC Kamau’s film “Grenfell Inspired Art” about the community artists response to Grenfell, the creation of a crowdsourced artwork by Toby Laurent-Belson Make your Mark inside and out, a final weekend of programming entitled Redesigning the Hostile Environment, which will examine strategies for overcoming seemingly insurmountable challenges for many different communities. There will be plays and talks about stop and search; the forced deportation of British Citizens to the countries of their birth; and the history of social justice in the UK. Finally, a new initiative, Brilliant School sees young people learning about Film Making and Architecture.

THIS YEAR’S ARCHITECTS

To appoint an architect for this year’s Pavilion, a charrette led by the Museum of Architecture was held at the Tabernacle opposite Powis Square, where the final design was built. The participating practices were OMMX, Practice Architecture, West Port and Co, The Decorators and ArchitectureDoingPlace. Following a local history presentation made by Tom Vague, the practices were given one hour to respond to the design brief, developing exciting proposals that included elements of performativity, close engagement with the local community, innovative use of materials and modular structures, as well as attentive responses to the specificity of the site. ArchitectureDoingPlace was selected as the winning practice for their sensitive approach to the local context and attention to the rich history of Powis Square.

Elegant town houses and a utilitarian housing estate make up the other edges of Powis Square, the site of key civil rights actions over the years which resulted in the founding of a public green space in 1968. It is a typically complex London environment, where resolving multiple ownerships determines the possibilities of small urban spaces. Grenfell Tower is a short walk away. The design developed by ArchitectureDoingPlace explores and illuminates these boundaries of ownership, by proposing a neutral ‘clearing’ where everyone can come together to celebrate the creative benefit of urban proximity. The proposal comprises a habitable threshold, 40 capacity learning space, a planted terrace which doubles as a stage, and pergolas from which to appreciate the square.

A NEW WAY OF WORKING

The Portobello Pavilion was the brainchild of local curator Tim Burke and was supported by Kensington and Chelsea’s INTRANSIT festival (focusing on new site specific endeavours) into being in 2015. Over the next few years, the Pavilion became the hub of the festival, tying in various local projects through free art-and-doing sessions held there each day. Following the Grenfell fire, the borough’s Arts & Culture Service re-evaluated the delivery of its two flagship festivals (Nour and InTRANSIT) to inform and forge a new way of working collaboratively with local creative community. The Pavilion this year will be a beacon project in which the council’s Arts & Culture Service sit on equal footing with locally based artists, curators and institutions to each support local arts in their own way through the Pavilion project. The evolving group, some of whose members are mentioned below hope that this year’s Pavilion will give awareness and opportunity to other local practitioners who might visit the Pavilion and help to steer the future of the project.

As well as supporting the Museum of Architecture in holding a charrette to appoint an architect, the group will also collaborate on programming the free arts activities on offer within the Pavilion itself. These will include gardening workshops, film screenings and a final weekend entitled Re-designing the Hostile Environment; a series of interventions, theatre pieces and talks about the resilience of diasporic communities.